GO FOR THE GOLD!
Folks who attended our Business Skills Enhancement Days specifically requested a training dedicated to Social Media only.

We are happy to bring that to you!!
MAKE IT HAPPPEN!

Do you have goals for your business in 2011? Would you like to develop some new marketing strategies? How are your skills in:
Facebook
Twitter
LinkedIn

DON’T HESITATE!

Our presenter will demonstrate much needed info on a big screen LIVE right from her computer! You can see the exact steps to take!

Become confident, connected, and successful!!

Are you timid when it comes to Social Media, but you see everyone else connected and seemingly proficient? This is one of the most powerful marketing tools to come along in a long time. Do you feel the nudge to finally get started?

JOANNE MARCINEK OF ASK JOANNE, LLC has been connected with The Door Opener for many years and we continue to be impressed with her knowledge base and unique ability to bring difficult concepts down to plain language for simple understanding. This is something we definitely need in the area of technology.

Join us on December 11 for a three-hour session of training on these and more:
– learn the difference between a personal and business account
– how to set up an account
– how to post and include a photo or link
– how to link Facebook to Twitter and Linked-In
– and so much more!

Bring your questions. In the meantime, please visit Joanne’s website to see how she can help you and your business, and to get a preview of her extensive knowledge and expertise! Visit www.askjoanne.com

Register through Dory Dzinski at The Door Opener at (860) 693-2840 or through thedooropener@comcast.net We look forward to seeing you there!!!

For more information on Internet Marketing Made Easy™ visit http://www.askjoanne.com

Looking at the latest search marketing conference agendas, articles, and online news in the SEM space, it certainly appears that social media marketing and networking are the wave of the future.To a certain extent, they are.

Social media, and social networking in particular, create a back-and-forth conversation with your target audience, so you can virally market your website through the “buzz” that can be created. When something interesting, cool, or unique is being talked about in “all the right places,” it can certainly provide a boost in website traffic.

We search marketers tend to hang out in numerous online and offline communities where it’s easy to promote our own products and services, yet I can’t help wondering if our view of Web marketing is skewed because of this.

Are potential B2B clients and even B2C customers spending time at Digg? Do they attend SEM conferences in order to hire a company, or are they just trying to learn to do it themselves? And what about other industries? Is there a Sphinn equivalent for developers of product lifecycle management software? Are there groups of people online comparing the various brands of auto parts? Are there really people seeking out articles on these topics?

Perhaps.

And if so, we’d be remiss not to promote our clients’ websites in those spaces. But is this search marketing? Or is it simply online marketing? Arguably, it becomes search marketing when it increases link popularity, but surely that should be the secondary goal of this type of marketing campaign. True link popularity comes from having something worth linking to, not something you’ve asked your insulated group of cronies to link to.

Certainly, the boost in direct traffic that a site can gain when it is being discussed in all the right places online is not to be taken lightly  and that alone is reason enough to try to be found in all the right places. Yet how much of that traffic actually converts into anything good, and how much does it help your organic search rankings?

More important  how does it increase your bottom line?

For instance, I’ve written a few articles that received upward of 1,000 visitors a day fromStumbleUpon alone. The spike in traffic was nice, and the slight increase in newsletter subscribers was certainly welcome, but for the most part, those StumbleUpon visitors spent just a few minutes on our site, and only a small percentage signed up for our free newsletter. None of them were interested in using our services. They read the article and then stumbled their way to the next site of potential interest.

Isn’t participation in social media really just preaching to the choir?

You reach your peers, not the people who will buy your product or service. Sure, it’s a nice ego stroke to have others in your industry tell you how cool you are, and there’s something to be said for building credibility within your own community. I’m certainly not knocking that, and have built my own credibility via various online communities in which I’ve participated over the past decade.

But how does it sell your products and services?

Do you gain customers and sales from your social media marketing and/or your participation in social networks? Does it increase your rankings for the keyword phrases your actual target audience is typing into the search engines? If your business model depends on traffic for traffic’s sake, or on how many ad impressions your site generates, then there’s an obvious value. But if you sell a product or a service  then not so much.

My fear with all the hype about social media marketing is that people new to search marketing will believe it’s what SEO demands and what SEO is all about.

It isn’t. Not by a long shot.

Social media marketing is a great addition to any traditional SEO work that you do, but it’s not a substitute. It’s more akin to hiring a PR firm once you’ve launched your already-SEO’d website. On-page SEO is definitely not as sexy as social media marketing, but it is still the most important investment in your website that you can make. Period.

So, go to all your social media conferences, and Digg your way to increased traffic. But first learn exactly who your target audience is, what they’re searching for in the search engines, and how your website can solve their problems. Then make sure your website does exactly that. All the social media buzz and traffic won’t amount to anything if your target audience isn’t already part of the online conversation.

Be sure to have your own house in order before you give social media marketing a try.

And don’t be surprised if it doesn’t actually provide you with the ROI you hoped it would. In most cases it will depend on who your target audience is, where they hang out, the types of services or products you offer, and whether your website truly provides people with what they’re looking for.

Getting back to SEO basics  that is, creating a crawler-friendly website that is built around the keyword phrases people use at the search engines to find what you offer  is the first and most important thing you can do for your website and your business. Yeah, it’s not as fun and exciting as social media marketing, but skip this step at your own peril!

Jill

—

Jill Whalen is CEO of High Rankings an SEO consulting company in the Boston, MA area.

Reprinted with permission

For more information on Internet Marketing Made Easy™ visit http://www.askjoanne.com

OK, so I am finally getting into learning about all the social media tools and how they can work together to spread news and information. I’m experimenting with http://ping.fm and http://hootsuite.com to consolidate some of the work of posting to several networks. I’m also playing with http://wisestamp.com to add links to all this “stuff” to the signatures in my emails. I’ll keep you posted on how it all goes…. stay tuned.

For more information on Internet Marketing Made Easy™ visit http://www.askjoanne.com